


got a secret, can you keep it?

by orphan_account



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Gen, Grounding techniques, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Nightmares, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:28:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29932737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: tommy tries to keep what might be the biggest secret of his life. his big mouth ends up ruining it for him.
Relationships: Wilbur Soot & Technoblade & TommyInnit & Phil Watson
Comments: 1
Kudos: 107





	got a secret, can you keep it?

**Author's Note:**

> this is a ventfic about how i've almost told so many people about what happened to me, except it's my worst fear of how it would happen.   
> if you recognize my writing style, i'm okay. and also no you don't.

He isn't sure why it comes to mind so often, now, only that it does. And when it does, he hates it, because Phil, Wilbur, and Techno don't know, and aren't supposed to know. Plus, he's safe now, so the nightmares and dissociation and panic attacks should've stopped. 

Keyword: should've. 

Tommy doesn't wake up screaming. He may play at being loud and brash but he knows how to keep his mouth shut, contrary to popular belief. Instead, he jolts awake, drenched in sweat with a sob on his lips. He doesn't cry, swallows the tears down like bile and does a reality check before splashing water on his face and going back to bed. The dreams scarcely haunt him twice a night. 

The dissociation is a little harder to hide. But Techno has ADHD, and zones out when he's bored, so Tommy calls it zoning out and prays Phil doesn't take a closer look. Techno comes back from zoning out right away. Tommy takes a few minutes to recover from dissociating. 

It's the panic attacks that are gonna be the death of him. He's yet to have one he can't contain until he gets back to his room, where he can hide his face in a pillow and let the panic run its course, but it's only a matter of time. Someday, he will have an attack in front of them, it's just a question of when. 

And, of course, it's during movie night. When else would it be? He doesn't even remember what movie it is, just that one moment he's fine and the next he's trembling as Phil scrambles to slap a hand over his eyes. Someone's paused the TV, and he can hear talking over the buzzing in his ears. 

Tommy would very much like to be fine. Except his heart is pounding and his hands are shaking and he feels lightheaded and if he wasn't hyperventilating before, he is now. The ambient light from the screen changes and then Phil's hand is off his face and oh, he's crying. He's crying and his chest hurts and his head is a spiral of bad thoughts. 

"Shit, didn't know that was part of the movie," Techno says. It sounds like it's underwater. He's still shaking. 

He's having a panic attack, he realizes, right in the middle of movie night, where his whole family can see. Tommy would swear, but he can barely get enough air to stay conscious. 

Someone's hands are on his shoulders. A silhouette blocks the light from the TV. He really doesn't want to be touched, but the hands don't budge at his uncoordinated protests. He pushes on them harder, resorting to scratching when they still don't let up. 

"Off, off, let go, let go of me," Tommy gasps, legs twitching. If he isn't freed in the next two seconds, someone's getting a face full of sock. 

But the hands let up, and the person leans back as the lights turn on. Phil is crouched in front of him, hands held out like he's a frightened animal. He might as well be, for how his panic-addled brain solves problems. Tommy pulls his legs up onto the sofa, burying his face in his hands. 

"You're safe," Phil says, not moving. "You're safe. I promise you're safe." 

The hyperventilation gives way to choked sobs, quiet pleas dying on his lips. Phil keeps murmuring reassurances, telling him he's safe. Someone pushes a blanket close enough to brush his thigh. He jumps at the contact. Phil's mantra of "you're safe, you're safe," becomes a droning in his head, contradicting the horrors his mind conjures but no less intrusive. 

The attack doesn't end because he pulls himself out of it, but because he's too physically exhausted to panic any longer. His eyes droop and his breath hitches as the whirlwind ebbs, slumping down as he relaxes from the tension he'd held himself in. 

"Tommy?" Phil's voice is quiet. "Are you with us?" 

Tommy nods, too exhausted to speak. 

"I'm gonna take you to bed, okay?" Phil asks. Tommy nods again. He lets Phil help him to his feet, but keeps a good distance while walking to his room. 

Phil doesn't touch him when he flops down in bed, only suggests he change out of jeans before leaving him be. As Tommy drifts off to sleep, he dreads the conversation that will inevitably happen in the morning. 

He wakes up before anyone comes to check on him, tears in his eyes and dreams meshing with reality. The sun is just beginning to rise, and his phone tells him it's six in the morning. An hour before he's usually awake. Sixty minutes to ground himself and brace for the conversation Phil will want to have. 

The minutes pass all too quickly. He's sitting on his bed, googling how to tell Phil what happened without telling Phil what happened when there's a soft knock at his door. 

"Tommy, are you up?" Phil calls through the door. 

"Yeah," Tommy says, hopefully loud enough to be heard. 

"Can I come in?" Phil asks. 

"Yeah," Tommy repeats. 

Phil opens the door slowly, stepping into the room and shutting it behind him. Tommy closes out of the tab and clears his history before sliding his phone into his pocket. Phil sits down on the edge of the bed wordlessly. Each second of silence only makes the hammering of Tommy's heart seem louder and louder. 

"So," Philza starts. "I want to talk about what happened last night, so we can avoid it happening again in the future." 

Tommy hums a response, picking at his fingernails. 

"That was a panic attack, right?" Phil asks. 

"Yeah," Tommy murmurs. 

"Do you know what triggered it?" Phil asks. 

Tommy is quiet. He knows damn well what triggered it, knows that it was the movie's rape scene, but if he tells Phil that then Phil will figure things out very quickly. He also can't just tell Phil what happened. He isn't ready. Twelve months isn't enough time to process. 

"Tommy?" Phil says, voice soft as he leans closer. "You with me?" 

"I'm here," Tommy says. 

"Do you want to tell me what made you panic last night?" Phil asks. 

Tommy shakes his head. 

"Alright." Phil puts a hand on his knee. "Is this the first panic attack you've had?" 

He hesitates. Does he tell Phil he's been struggling and have to spill about it, or does he try to keep it all in and pretend he's okay a little longer? 

"No," he murmurs. "It's not." 

Phil's expression is unreadable. "Okay. Thank you for telling me." Phil's hand comes off his knee. "Is there anything else that's been going on?" 

"I get nightmares sometimes," Tommy says. "And dissociate. Sometimes." 

"Alright. Thank you, Tommy. You can always come to me if you need help with something, okay?" Phil says. 

"Mhm," Tommy hums. 

Phil lets him be. Tommy presses his face into his pillow. 

He's no clue how he's supposed to say that it wasn't just emotional abuse that has him as fucked up as he is. How do you tell the people who took you in that they aren't the first people you sought attention from?

He googles it a lot. How to tell someone he was raped. How to make it hurt less. The websites recommend writing letters or sending texts if he can't say it but that feels far too impersonal. And he can't just say it, or he would. He's tried. The words get stuck in his throat until he chokes on them. There's no good solution. 

So he keeps it in, lets it fester like a wound, and lets Phil help him with the nightmares and panic attacks. And still googles how to tell someone, because he has to do it eventually. If he half-hopes someone will read the search bar over his shoulder, then that's nobody's business but his own. 

It comes out on accident, during a game night played over Discord with Tubbo and Ranboo and Karl and Quackity and Wilbur. Talking Points is a fun game. The mildly sexual topics don't bug him all that much, and he participates in the drawing of dicks during other games. He copes just fine. 

But then Karl's topic is about the joys of sex. Tommy knows Karl is fairly confident in his asexual label. He hadn't figured how Karl found that out, though. 

"Stop making fun of me, I don't know what sex is like," Karl whines halfway through his presentation. 

And Tommy's mouth moves before his brain can stop it. "Just get raped a few times like the rest of us, it's not that hard," he mutters, and the call goes dead silent. 

"Tommy, I'm -- uh, I'm live," Quackity stammers, and the reality of what Tommy just said hits him like a freight train. 

"Fuck, shit, I didn't mean to _say_ that, fuck, oh fuck, don't clip that, nobody clip that, _fuck_ " -he's vaguely aware of the chime that indicates an admin pulled him out of the voice chat- "oh shit, oh fuck, oh shit, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck_!" 

His hands find his face, one clamped over his mouth and the other scratching at his neck. Tears blur his vision but he doesn't care that he's crying. Tommy's just blurted his biggest secret _live on stream_ to the fifty thousand people that were watching. He thinks the presence he can feel behind him is a flashback until his headphones are tilted so one ear is free. 

"Tommy, can I take these off?" Phil's voice is gentle, is quiet, is nothing like the heavy rasp he expected. He barely has the wits to hum an assent. Phil takes his headphones off and his eyes flick to Phil's hands setting them on their stand. 

Phil squats down next to his chair, spinning Tommy to face him a little more. "Are you with me?" Phil asks. The world is dripping. He can see shadows out of the corners of his eyes. 

"No," he croaks, broken and wobbly and everything he isn't supposed to be. 

"Alright. Can I touch you?" Phil asks. Tommy shakes his head violently. The shadows draw nearer every time he blinks, and his heart pounds faster the closer they get. 

He flinches when the whispers in his head start, murmurs in his own voice that he wanted it, that it felt good, that he wouldn't have made those noises if he didn't want to. He feels himself trembling, pressing his thighs together and crossing his ankles and the hand picking at his skin pulls his shirt down. As if that protected him then. As if it could protect him now. 

"Tommy," Phil says, tone and expression indicating it's not the first time. "Listen to me, just for a little, okay?" 

He forces himself to nod. Phil won't hurt him. 

"Can you hold out your hand? Just for a minute. I won't touch you," Phil says. Tommy manages to unclamp his fingers from his shirt and hold his hand out, palm up. Something soft is pressed into it, and he grabs the item automatically. 

It's a small pig tsun-tsun, one Techno had gotten him as a gag gift that he'd treasured for years. The confusion of being handed the tsun-tsun shakes the whispers from his brain. "The fuck?" 

"Describe it to me, please," Phil says. "As much detail as you can manage." 

Tommy stares at the tsun-tsun. "It's pink," he says, rubbing the fabric. "And soft. It fits in my palm." 

"Good," Phil says. 

Tommy's other hand comes to fiddle with the little ears sewn onto the toy. "The ears are soft. It's got a little felt crown. And rhinestones on it," he says. His fingers trace the trim of the coat it's been dressed in. "I think it's the king pig." 

Phil nods. Tommy doesn't need further prompting. "The coat is red. It's smooth, not fuzzy. There's fur around the collar. That's soft. And white. It's got a little curly tail," he says, running his thumb over it. "It's got a little happy face on it. Techno got it for me a few years ago. It was supposed to be a joke, but I really like it." 

He stares at the tsun-tsun and realizes that he's not shaking, he's relaxed and the traces of memory are gone from the corners of his eyes. He's out of the panic attack. He's never pulled himself out like this before. 

"Are you with me?" Phil asks. Tommy nods. He's here. He's safe. "Good, good. Uh, we need to discuss what you said, there, mate." 

Tommy's heart drops. "I, uh," and he wants to lie so bad but he just had a panic attack in front of Phil and he can't lie his way out of that. 

"Are you safe?" Phil asks. Tommy blinks. "From your abuser. Are you safe from your abuser?" 

He almost asks "which one?" but he has enough control over his mouth not to. "Yeah," he breathes, instead. "I -- I'm safe now." 

"Can you tell me the last time it happened?" Phil asks. Tommy wracks his brain. When was the last time he sent a picture? When did Wilbur cry over the pictures he'd sent, when had Tommy realized he was being hurt? 

"Last year," he murmurs. "I, they wanted pictures. I deleted them after I sent them." The heartbreak in Phil's eyes hurts. 

"Do you remember when it started?" Phil asks. 

He barely does. "I was five, we looked at a magazine. The -- the first time I was... _touched_ , I was seven." The words roll off his tongue much easier than he expected. But he hasn't exactly said he was raped, not yet, not directly. "But I'm safe, now." 

Phil relaxes a little at his last statement. It was more for himself, but he's glad his dad is less worried, now. "Can I touch you?" Phil asks. 

Tommy leans forward into Phil's arms, clinging to his father like Phil is his lifeline. He's not crying, but he's trembling again as he presses his face into Phil's shoulder. "Thank you for telling me. I know it must've been hard." Tommy nods. 

"I said it on stream," he whispers. "What am I gonna do?" 

"We'll figure it out. You can take a break if you need. It's your choice how much you want to share with the Dream SMP and the world." Phil's breath tickles his scalp. It's comforting. "I won't say anything you don't want me to. Neither will Tech and Wilbur." 

"Okay," Tommy breathes. "Okay." 

He makes a discord and invites the entire Dream SMP to it. Somehow, it's the first server they're all in together. He waits a day for the welcome messages to peter out, then sends an @everyone. 

**Tommyinnit**

@everyone so, i'm sure you all saw the stream, or the clips, or the tweets. I wanted to let you all know that i'm safe, i'm not being hurt anymore. And i might take a break from streaming for a bit to deal with some big man shit. Don't tell anyone anything. This is private and i want to keep it that way. 

He mutes the server. He'll read the messages later. He still has to make a tweet about it. 

**BIGGEST MAN**

_@tommyinnit_

if you saw the stream or the clips, im safe now and im taking time off streaming to do some big man shit 

He deletes Twitter from his phone once he tweets. He can go on his computer to scroll mindlessly if he wants to. The notifications will just piss him off. 

Tommy stares at his ceiling, wondering what he did to deserve a childhood like that. Wondering where it all went wrong. Wondering why nobody ever _noticed_.

**Author's Note:**

> again, if you recognize my writing style no you don't. thanks for reading.


End file.
